Bad Reception
by fleurofthecourt
Summary: "And the winner is..." the announcer pulls back the flap of the envelope, and, abruptly, the screen goes fuzzy. The color blends together, distorted. Odd. The reception is usually excellent. [Dean/Cas]
1. Chapter 1

"And the winner is..." the announcer pulls back the flap of the envelope, and, abruptly, the screen goes fuzzy. The color blends together, distorted.

Odd.

The reception is usually excellent.

Frustrated, Cas fidgets with the antennae and taps at the TV's side.

The image changes, and, slowly, the colors resolve. The picture comes back into focus, and a familiar outline followed by an even more familiar face comes into view.

Dean is on his screen, which is strange.

He should not be.

There is no show with Dean.

Confused, he glances around for any sign that he's no longer alone in the safe little corner of his mind. But everything around him is neat and orderly, just as it should be.

He turns back to the screen to see Dean's eyes laser focused on him, his voice desperate and urgent, "Cas, come on, snap out of it. You gotta hear me. Cas, come on!"

Strange.

Dean is on the TV.

But Dean also appears to be looking right at him, speaking to him.

He squints and frowns. "Dean...? You can see me?"

The Dean in the screen leans forward and reaches for him. "Of course I can see you. You're right in front of me!"

His skin tingles under the ghost of Dean's touch, a faint rustling tugs at the fabric of his trenchcoat, and the bunker, suddenly, smells of blood and earth and Dean.

He feels wobbly.

He blinks and squints, and the TV and the kitchen go fuzzy at the edges.

But Dean?

Dean stays in focus.

Dean's hands rest on his shoulders, holding him steady, as he repeats on an endless loop, "Cas, you gotta stay with me. Cas, come on. I know you're still in there. Just look at me. Cas!"

It comes to him slowly and then like an avalanche.

This is real.

Dean is real.

His arms and hands crawl up Dean's back slowly, tentatively.

His limbs no longer feel like his own.

But he manages to wrap his arms tight around Dean, pulling him close. Dean shudders against him, surprised and relieved. "That's it, Cas. That's it. Stay with me."

Dean rubs circles against his back, and he blinks and blinks and blinks until the TV set and the bunker's kitchen fade from view and, finally, disappear entirely.

He sees now that they're in a field, surrounded by grass, with the pink sky above fading into velvet.

He takes in several deep breaths of the fresh evening air as Dean presses his forehead to his. "Cas, damn it. Never do anything like this again. You hear me? I... you're...Cas..."

Cas tilts his forehead into Dean's and nods. "I'm sorry it didn't work. I never should have trusted Lucifer. I believed him when he said he could..."

Dean's eyes shoot to his hairline as he pulls back, "You think I'm upset that it didn't work? "

"Aren't you?"

"No! I'm ... you goddamn idiot. You could've..." Dean pulls him into a bone crushing hug, squeezing him tighter and tighter. "I missed you. God, I missed you, Cas."

Dean's voice is breaking, tears are welling in his eyes, and Cas is lost.

He cups Cas' jaw with his hand and brushes his thumb against his lips. "So, come on, I'm taking you home."


	2. Chapter 2

"Home," Cas repeats, the word heavy and strange on his tongue. He knows, or, at least, he thinks he knows, what Dean means.

The bunker. The real bunker. The one that exists outside of the headspace he's been living in for months.

"Yeah, home, can hook you up with some Netflix or something," Dean suggests as he cups his shoulder and pushes him to the left. "Looks like you could use some rest."

Cas looks past Dean to see Sam leaning against the Impala, several yards away, looking immensely relieved and nodding. "Yeah, Cas, you've earned that."

He nods vaguely.

Everything - Dean, Sam, the Impala - feels far away. Like it isn't real.

His legs feel weak and unused. He knows, technically, they just haven't been used by him. But he still staggers as he walks.

Dean notices and wraps his entire arm around his waist and helps him the whole way to the car, even pulling the door to the backseat open for him.

He stands back once he's settled against the seat and gives him a once over. "You still with us? You're not looking so hot."

Cas knits his brow together, tries to make everything stay in focus, and frowns when it still seems like there's a filmy lense between him and Dean.

He sighs. He really, truly does not know what's wrong with him.

So he tells Dean all he does know, "I'm...I'm broken, Dean."

And no one cares, Dean's voice from years before echoes unforgivingly.

He rubs at his eyes and forehead, trying to ignore it.

He likes to think Dean didn't mean it then. That he was simply angry (and he had had a right to be). And that he certainly wouldn't say it now.

But, try as he might, he can't push the words away.

The Dean in front of him jolts back, eyebrows raised. "Oh yeah? According to who? Lucifer? Don't you dare let him get to you. Because that's a bunch of bull crap, Cas."

Cas stares down at his hands where he's folded them in his lap.

If only it had been Lucifer's words that he'd been trying to tune out when he'd been pulling up reruns of 50s games shows and terrible reality TV from the cache Metatron stuffed in his head, then Dean would understand.

That would be an acceptable form of broken.

But the truth is, he was broken long before he said 'yes.'

"No."

"No, it's not bullcrap?"

He looks up at Dean slowly, wishing he didn't have to say it. But he does. "No, it wasn't Lucifer."

Dean's eyes go wide. "What do you mean 'it wasn't Lucifer?' Someone else been poking around your noggin?"

Cas sighs heavily and leans into the seat. "Lucifer left me alone. I..."

He closes his eyes and shakes his head. Because that's the worst part of all of this.

Lucifer didn't make him believe he didn't matter, that he wasn't needed, that he couldn't help.

He already knew.

Metatron? The other angels? Amara?

They had all made that perfectly clear.

Even Sam and Dean had pushed the thought into his head. They may not have meant it. He likes to hope they didn't. But they hadn't really been asking for his help.

And honestly?

He wouldn't want his help either.

He'd failed them so many times before.

He shakes his head harder.

He doesn't want to remember all these things, all these things he's been blocking out.

He needs his kitchen and his TV back.

He needs his shows.

Something funny. Something he can laugh at. Something that will tell him it's all going to be alright.

"Whoa, okay, buddy. You are definitely not okay," Dean's voice crackles in the distance, as the firm weight of his hand comes back to his shoulder. "Sam, he's...I don't know. But he's spacing out on me. I'm going to try and snap him out of it. You drive."

The keys rattle tinnily before Sam's voice comes in, low and static, "Lucifer's gone, right? Like gone gone?"

"Sure looked like that spell worked to me. Something got blasted back to Hell, and it sure wasn't Cas. He's out of it, sure, but it's him. It's definitely him. And, come on, God, God himself helped us pull this one off."

"Yeah, I'm still trying to wrap my head around that," Sam says.

God?

"Yeah, who knew Cas was God's favorite," Dean says.

Certainly not Cas.

He squints at the seat as the engine rumbles beneath them. "God?"

His own voice shocks him about as much as it shocks Dean. "Hey, you with me again?"

"For the moment," he has no idea how long curiosity will override whatever else is going on in his head, "I believe."

"Okay, can work with that, I guess... so ...God's back. He came back for you, actually. Because of whatever Amara did while you were playing puppet."

"Why would he do that?" Cas frowns, perplexed. "Why would he come back for me? I'm not important."

"Excuse me? But did I just hear you say you're 'not important?'" Dean practically barks the question at him. He sounds almost angry.

Cas blinks. "I'm not. I'm not an Archangel. At this point, I'm hardly even an angel."

"Far as I'm concerned, that's a damn good thing," Dean says. "You're the only angel I ever liked. Certainly the only one I ever considered family. And I never ever want to hear you say you aren't important again. Because you are."

Cas tries to absorb that as Dean rattles on.

"And you know why God came back for you?"

He can't begin to imagine.

"Because you're the only one, the only one that ever did what God wanted. You loved us..." Dean chokes on seemingly nothing and clears his throat, "Humans, that is. The way He wanted you to."

It's so simple but so implausible. "Oh."

There had been far too many opportunities for God to come back before now, why would this time be different?

He still doesn't really believe it.

He's overwhelmed and confused, and all he wants his nice safe kitchen.

He starts to drift back to it, and Dean's fingers lace into his and squeeze. "Hey, Space Cadet. Stay with me."

"I can't, Dean. It's...it's so difficult."

Dean's hand squeezes his again. "You can. Come on. Talk to me. Tell me what's going on."

He closes his eyes. "I...I feel like I don't matter. I ..I felt like that before. It's..it's why I said 'yes.' It's the only way I thought I could help."

"What?" Dean sounds like he's been punched in the throat, and the next thing he knows Dean's arms are wrapped around him so tightly he doesn't think he could pry them off. "You...you goddamn idiot...Cas...Castiel Winchester, you matter to me. You matter a whole hell of a lot."

Winchester?

He hardly has time to process Dean giving him his last name before a soft kiss is pressed against his temple.

"Of course you matter."

Then his cheek.

"You matter like crazy."

And finally his lips.

XXX

What feels like hours later, when Dean's wrapping him in a completely unnecessary blanket, Sam ahems from the front seat, "Not to break up your makeout session or anything, but, uh, I think we need to talk about getting Cas some help."

Dean straightens up and frowns at Sam. "What?"

"Dean, he has Depression."

"Oh. Oh, yeah, that...that makes sense," Dean scrubs at his face. "We're idiots."

"Cas, we weren't paying enough attention to you," Sam says. "And it's not because you don't matter. Because you do. We were too wrapped up in our own problems to notice yours. That doesn't mean yours don't matter. But from now on, you've got to tell us about them. Even if they don't make any sense to you. Because I'm sure this didn't."

"I'm still not sure it does."

"And that's okay. We're still going to help you through it," Sam says.

Dean wraps his arm over his shoulder, "Yeah, because we're family and that's what families do."


End file.
